What is Not There

A long and graceful set of wide concrete steps up one rise to a landing, then up one rise to…something that is not there.

I see many of these around here, steps that lead to apparently nothing, though there was once a structure there, usually a home. I see them often near on-ramps or roads to limited-access roads, homes taken by eminent domain so that a roadway could be built to carry more traffic more efficiently.

To have this double set of steps built of this quality and still in good shape, this must have been a grand structure, and interesting to imagine what it might have been. An large stately home with many rooms at the intersection of two well-traveled roads with a Revolutionary-era inn on the opposite corner, built when this neighborhood was trending? A church in easy reach of small neighborhoods?

It is, nonetheless, a sign that people settled here, made a place to live or gather here, grand enough to build these concrete steps as an entrance, steps that still exist though the building is long gone, as long as I’ve been driving past this spot.

Nice to think they may have built it just to access the woods up there, but unlikely. Someday maybe I’ll take a look at the records just to satisfy my curiosity.

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